Career Day, HalfBlood Style
by PenBlender '95
Summary: Career day. Sounds simple enough. Unless of course you're at Camp HalfBlood, and your parent is an Olympian god. That's not so simple. No particular time setting other than after you meet Thalia. READ THE NEW CHAPTER! IT ACTUALLY HAS A PLOT!
1. Chapter 1

Career Day

_Olympus_

Zeus had come to a decision. It couldn't wait, so he had called a meeting.

"Family!" he boomed, "I have thought long and hard on this, and I have decided. Tomorrow we will go down to Camp Half-blood and spend some long needed time with our children." This was greeted by absolute silence. "Or," he added, "You can spend the day recovering from a bizarre, lightning related accident." The gods were a bit more enthusiastic now.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

_Camp Half-blood_

Poseidon stared at the chaos of "family bonding". Ares had disappeared under a pig pile from his cabin, Athena and her children were attempting to weave the world's largest tapestry, and his brother Zeus was lecturing his only daughter on the importance of cloud formations.

Happy times.

Poseidon looked around for his own son, Perseus. He headed for cabin three. Ah, there was Percy now. Along with that satyr, Gary or something. Percy was actually dragging what's-his-face by the neck of his T-shirt, saying,"Come on _buddy_! Time to say hi to my Daddio!" and wearing a slightly insane grin. Ah, yes. My son.

The satyr was whimpering pitifully. "I don't wanna! I get nervous around immortals!"

"Well, start biting your nails G-man. There's Poseidon."

Percy deposited the satyr by Poseidon's feet."Dad, Grover. Grover, Dad."

Grover yelped and jumped to his hooves. He bowed low. "H-hello L-lord Poseidon. I'd love to stick around, but I have to…uh… tie my shoe! _Over there!_" With that he sprinted away, leaving Poseidon alone with Percy.

Percy glanced toward the lake, then back to Poseidon "So why is it called career day again? No offence, but does being god of the ocean even count as a career?"

Not having an answer, Poseidon asked the first question that came to mind."Where can you get some ambrosia around here?" _No!_ He tried to recover."I mean, uh, let's go to the lake! I like the lake. Who's up for the lake?" Styx. This would be complicated.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Four demolished canoes and a hippocampus ride later, father and son sat at the bottom of the lake, bored beyond belief.

"My turn," Poseidon said dully. "I spy something wet."

"Everything." Percy suddenly jumped up. "I spy a good time!" he announced. With no apparent warning, he shouted, "RAINBOW!!!"

Poseidon raised an eyebrow. "Rainbow?"

Percy shrugged. "Tyson."

"Ah."

Promptly, Rainbow the hippocampus appeared with a friend. Percy grinned somewhat evilly."Race to the Pacific?"

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

"I still don't see how it can be illegal to come out of the ocean and be dry," Poseidon said blankly, sitting on the bench of the jail cell.

"Don't forget riding unauthorized horses with fish tails," Percy added, completely at ease.

"How are you so calm?" his father demanded.

Percy shrugged. "Meh. No demon math teachers. No man-eating Canadians. No manticores. This beats every school I've been to in years. Food's better too, I'm sorry to say." He added, nudging the plate of mush they had been given. He looked up. "What are you doing anyway? Just do something godly, or water related."

"Well, I could show myself in immortal form, but that wouldn't do anything but disintegrate you, and then your mother would bury me alive, which would be bad, considering my feud with Hades."

"Okay, let's move on to the 'water related' category."

"Right! I know!" Poseidon jumped up, inspired. "I'll start a hurricane and submerge the jail underwater! Brilliant!"

"Wait!-no!-Dad that's not what I meant!-no!-Dad-wait-stop!-DAD NO!"

Too late. A hurricane had already started where they had washed up on Miami Beach, and had started toward the jail. Momentarily, the entire jail was under water, and a whirlpool was going in Poseidon's and Percy's cell. Percy was caught in the current, swirling around and banging his head on walls."Ow-ow-ow-ow…"

Poseidon looked around. "Well, this wasn't one of my better ideas," he said flatly.

"You- ow! - think?! Ow! Ow!"

"Oh, right." Poseidon yanked his son out of the current and sat him on the bench.

Percy looked around at the chaos and sighed. "You know what the really pitiful part is?"

"What?"

"This still beats every school I've been to in years."

**author's note: **_Well? Like it? Hate it? Tell me! Leave me a review and tell me! Just click that little button and type your feelings!_


	2. Chapter 2

Career Day, Continued….

**A/N: Okay, guys .In response to the overwhelming feedback I'm been getting recently, (I've been nominated for a Veritas award! Woo!) I've decided to give you some new giggles. Please bear in mind that I wrote the original years ago, and my writing style and knowledge of proper FanFiction form have (hopefully) improved a lot. So, I herby announce that I own nothing, and I sincerely appreciate all reviews. Please enjoy the new and improved chaos of my brain!**

Hermes was probably the only god with a plan for career day. This may or may not have been because he was one of the only gods with an active career. Unfortunately, neither his plan nor his career were suitable for the weak hearted, so he was going to have to weed out the campers who couldn't handle it before they could get going. He couldn't feel very upset about this though, because it meant that he _finally_ had an excuse to use his patented _Scare the Poor Helpless Campers out of Their Skins _speech.

"Alright, wannabes!" he barked at the mismatched crew of Cabin Eleven. "Today is career day, and as you know I have a very interesting career. A choice few of you are going to be allowed to see this career firsthand. But before you go volunteering yourselves like a bunch of overeager Naiads, let's go over exactly _what_ is coming at you.

"We will be moving at a very fast pace to cover all the bases, and we will not under any circumstances slow down. If you get tired, hungry, or even bored you will be left behind. If you twist your ankle, break your nose, or get a concussion you will be left behind. If you lose a limb, suffer a heart attack, or get electrocuted you will be left behind. If you are not left behind you will soon wish that you had never been born.

"In agreeing to accompany me on this little jaunt, you agree to the risks of maiming, death, dismemberment, and in rare cases alien abduction. I am immortal, and I have feared for _my_ life doing this job. Being the god of thieves means you are automatically on the wrong side of some _very_ unpleasant individuals.

"You cannot maintain any sense of right and wrong on this field trip. If you get squeamish they can smell your fear. And don't ask who _they_ are, because if I knew I wouldn't be here right now. If any of you have any doubts about coming with me today, I strongly recommend that you go to the arts and crafts cabin."

A stampede of terrified campers surged over to the aforementioned cabin. Hermes shook his head distastefully.

"They just don't make heroes like they used to…" He said to himself. He turned to see how many had chosen to tag along. And saw exactly two. "Are you really the only ones crazy enough?" he asked.

The brothers saluted. "Not so much crazy as stupid, Lord Hermes," one announced.

"And very, very bored, your Godliness," the other added.

"So, um," the first brother was bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Do we really get to do all that stuff? 'Cos I've _always_ wanted to be abducted by aliens, and this kid in cabin seven had a couple really sick ideas of how to make it happen, and-"

"What about being electrocuted?" the other cut in. "That would be so _epic_ if we survived, and even if we didn't, _man_ what a way to go-"

"I'm afraid not," Hermes headed them off. "Most of that was to scare off the less committed campers. Especially the '_they_' part. I know exactly who they are, and they're really not that bad. But it is going to be quite a trip, if you can handle it. By the way, seeing as how you're my children, you should probably tell me your names."

"Connor and Travis Stoll, Lord Thieveriness, and trust me. We can handle a lot."

"Yeah," snorted the first brother. "Try fending off the entire Ares Cabin from the last of the ice cream, Oh Lord of Pickpockets and Hitchhikers."

An impressive feat, Hermes had to admit. "Yes, that should qualify you. And please call me Hermes. It's just easier to say."

They looked slightly put out over the fact that they wouldn't get to use all of the possible names they had most likely been accumulating for years, but Hermes quickly made it up to them.

"Now, let's take a look at what we _are_ doing today…"

Any disappointment quickly dissolved from the boys' faces as he showed them the elaborately doodled plan.

"This is legitimately going to kill us," one said in awe.

The other nodded enthusiastically. "Forget electrocution, _this_ is the death of heroes."

Hermes decided that he like these kids. They knew a good time when they saw it.

Apollo stood protectively by his Sun-Ferrari. The thing was his greatest love, and this was not a safe place for it. He had only brought it with him because he had been entertaining the warped theory that it was even less safe at an unguarded Olympus.

He had never been so wrong.

After all these years, he'd forgotten how downright _dangerous_ heroes were. In the surrounding chaos, not one of them seemed to be doing anything that wasn't destructive. The Ares kids were practically driving themselves to extinction, Zeus's daughter seemed to have picked an argument with the _Lord of the Sky_, and for some reason the entire Hermes cabin had recently hurtled into the arts and crafts cabin where they were now making lanyards as if their lives depended on it. This place was like the inside of Cyclops's brain.

_**Shudder.**_

But nothing was going to harm his Ferrari. Not the army of his children at the archery range, not the train wreck that was Ares cabin, not even Zeus's immortal parent/superhuman teenager conflict.

He knew what he was doing.

Then someone started playing the kazoo. Very badly.

His immortal heart practically stopped. "_Why?_" he groaned to no one. Of all the instruments in the world, of all the ways to butcher a perfectly good piece of music, why had the assailant chosen _kazoo?_ "Will you stop the torture?" he bellowed. "I think my ears are actually bleeding!"

The noise just got louder. He stormed over to the source of the retched "music". He hated the kazoo with every fiber of his being. It was a little known fact, but he had actually invented the awful thing by mistake. Then by some cruel twist of fate it had caught on with children of the mortal world, and now he couldn't go any more than a few years without stumbling across some "precious little concert" being put on by a loud five year old. That instrument was the bane of his existence.

He stopped short when he saw the source. It was just a recording playing on a loop, stashed behind cabin eleven.

But why would someone deliberately put the most horrible sound in the world…?

Oh no.

He sprinted back with all the speed he could manage without causing serious geographical alteration. Hermes wouldn't dare, he wasn't that crazy, it was just a misunderstanding, he was sure-

Apollo skidded to a halt and watched forlornly as Hermes and two of his children "borrowed" his Ferrari for a celestial joy ride.

That sacred cows incident in ancient times was _nothing_ compared to this…

Connor was almost sure he was driving too fast. "Is this an okay speed?" He hollered over the wind.

"Probably not," Hermes replied. He appeared to be quite pleased with the situation, oddly enough. "Do you want to speed up anyway?"

Connor debated this for a minute, and then did what any person would do in his situation. He floored the accelerator and started laughing loudly.

"Hey," Travis called from the makeshift backseat. "If we're driving the sun, why isn't it causing problems with the world's daylight schedule?"

"It's not the sun right now," the god explained. "You can turn the sun part off for a while when you need to. The dawn can hold its own for about a week without Apollo."

"Handy."

"So, is this really what you do for a living?" asked Connor.

"Sometimes," came the reply. "I really just have to deliver messages for the gods, so I like to get creative with the method of delivery."

"Can we do this when we grow up?"

"Well, honestly I had hoped you two would get a respectable career, like art thievery. But if you want I can give you a summer job this year."

The cheer they gave off taught Hermes a good deal about the lung capacity of a demigod.

**A/N: Yep, there we go. The long anticipated sequel. As most of you have doubtlessly figured out, this is my only story, and I'm sorry to say that that probably won't change. It's not that I've given up on the site or anything dramatic like that, it just takes me about three years to update. My sincere apologies to Career Day fans. **

** Anywho, I greatly appreciate the reviews I've gotten, especially those who offer ideas or ask for permission to use the Career Day plot. So, because you all seem to think this story deserves more attention than I'm actually going to give it, I just want to clarify that I encourage anyone who wants to use the idea. I'm even posting some writing prompts on my profile.**

** Special thanks for the Veritas nomination!**

**3 PenBlender**


End file.
